


So Familiar a Gleam

by Anonymous



Category: Maleficent (Disney Movies), The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Family Bonding, Grounder Bellamy Blake, Not Octavia friendly, The grounders are the fair folk now, With A Twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23316811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When the dropship first lands, Bellamy is hopeful.It doesn't last.After all, the humans who were left behind, they've been on there own for a while.Things have changed.(Maleficent meets The 100 meets the author's glaring ignorance about either franchise.)
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Madi, Bellamy Blake & Octavia Blake, Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Clarke Griffin & Madi
Comments: 5
Kudos: 109
Collections: Anonymous, Non Anonymous TROPED Collection





	So Familiar a Gleam

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer 1: this was technically written for the qualifying round of the [Chopped competition](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Chopped_Madness), but a) it's way too long, and b) I didn't actually sign up. Everyone who did compete did amazingly, and you should go read all of those fics instead of this one!
> 
> Disclaimer 2: I've never actually watched an episode of The 100, and everything I know comes from various gifsets and YouTube videos.
> 
> Disclaimer 3: I haven't seen Maleficent since I was in high school, so most of my knowledge regarding that property is pretty dang rusty, too

When the ship falls out of the sky, Bellamy isn't afraid. 

Not at first.

He's hopeful.

Years and years later, that's the part that will hurt the most, the way that he _hoped_ , the way he really thought that it would be alright.

Octavia is hopeful, too, curious and excited and full of bright optimism.

"It'll be fine," she tells everyone else, when they worry. "We're humans, they're humans. What is there to be worried about?"

(Years later, this will hurt, too.)

After all, it's easy for her to forget.

The mutations that swept through the humans who were left behind, they're not visible on her, nothing but a strange lightness to her step, a weightlessness that no standard-issue human could ever hope to replicate. 

Bellamy feels the weight of his wings where they brush against the ground, and he has a moment of doubt.

 _But no_ , he tells himself, and he's still young enough and foolish enough to believe it. _O's right. Everything will be fine._

They send a pair of delegates to the Sky People's campsite, and just because Bellamy's hopeful doesn't mean he's stupid.

He sends Octavia and Monty, another mostly normal-looking kid, and for a little while, he hopes that it might be enough. 

The Sky People are friendly, if a bit wary, and they welcome the pair with a cautious sort of trust that seems entirely fair to him, where he watches from a nearby tree.

"Really, Bell," O says when she leaves the camp and finds him waiting. "It's like you're expecting something to go wrong."

He isn't.

Not at first.

But they visit the camp, and everything is fine, and then three days later, one of the Sky People sees Emori in the woods, screams in terror and calls her a freak, calls her a monster, and Bellamy feels fear begin to take root somewhere far, far away in the back of his mind.

He's right to be afraid.

The humans don't have an issue with the grounders who look like O.

If he asked, Bellamy thinks, they probably would say they don't have a problem with the ones who look like him and Emori, either.

But things all change pretty quickly, and he stops caring about what they'd say soon enough. 

At first, the encroachments are little things, easy to overlook.

He doesn't begrudge them a place to live, of course, but they keep pushing further and further into the woods without a single thought for the power of the place, without even pausing to ask if the land that they swallow up has already been claimed.

Like it's their birthright.

Like it's where they belong.

Bellamy sends Octavia back to the camp, and he trusts her, trusts her to be clever enough and quick enough and pretty enough to make the humans listen, to make them stop and rest in what they have.

And his sister _is_ clever, he knows, clever and quick and pretty and persuasive. 

It isn't enough.

Bellamy isn't quite so hopeful anymore.

Twelve days after the humans first landed, they kill a boy in the woods somewhere, because they are frightened.

Or maybe they kill him because he has something they want.

(Or maybe they kill him just because they can.)

But a boy has died, and the humans who fell from the sky cut off his horns like a trophy, leave the rest of him lying in the dirt, and there's no going back, not from something like that.

"They're humans," he tells O when she returns from their camp, pale and shaken. "How else was this ever going to go?"

"We're humans, too, Bell," his sister says, but her eyes dart to the wings that curl tight around his shoulders, and he isn't so sure.

"Maybe we used to be," he allows, and feels the power that thrums through his veins as rage burns hollow in his chest. "But don't worry. It doesn't last."

He's never particularly enjoyed fighting.

In the clashes with other grounder clans, Bellamy knows, there's a certain decorum, a set of rules to be followed, and it's easy to stick to them, to set a limit and then not go beyond.

The humans don't fight like that.

There are no limits with them.

They strike directly at the heart of the forest, and Bellamy leaps into the air when the first alarm sounds, soars high over the noise of the fight, and then he dives, straight back down, aiming straight for their leader with arms outstretched—

The man has a hold on one of the younger grounders, one hand on her throat and the other reaching for a gun—

He feels, rather than hears, the _crunch_ of the man's bones, feels the snap of something fragile and has to choke back an anger so bright that it almost feels like joy.

 _Good_ , he thinks, as the man falls and the Sky People begin to panic. _Good_.

He's never particularly enjoyed fighting.

But that doesn't mean he isn't good at it.

The humans are relentless.

They are well-armed, and they're determined, and they have a fierce sort of entitlement to this world that would be admirable if it weren't so poisonous.

But at the end of the day, the humans are weak.

Bellamy cuts a line right down the middle of the next band of soldiers, feels the bullets glance off his skin, and he laughs out loud at the looks on their faces.

 _Just leave us alone_ , he wants to say, but can't for the way he's laughing. _Won't you just leave us alone?_

Octavia tries a few more times to reason with them.

She visits their fortress alone, unarmed and trusting and ready to negotiate. 

The third time, she comes back with quickly-fading burn marks on one cheek.

"Iron," she says, and Bellamy feels that same fear coiling sick and heavy in the pit of his stomach, even as the red marks fade and his sister is whole once more. "Who knew, right?"

There's always some excuse, with the humans.

At first, it's land.

"We have as much a right to be here as they do," the human queen says, when she has no way of knowing that the forest has ears even in the heart of her stronghold. "We have a right to live where we want."

After that, it's self-defense.

"They're animals," the soldiers whisper, when Bellamy drapes himself in shadow and walks unseen among them. "We've got to wipe them out now, before they slaughter us all in the middle of the night."

After that, he sort of loses track of the excuses. 

That's all they are, just excuses, so why should he care?

It's about the land, or it's about self-defense, or it's because all the grounders are an abomination and cannot be borne.

At one point, the queen's daughter disappears, and the humans are so _sure_ that one of the grounders must have killed her, because it's not like this world is dangerous enough on its own, and surely some spoiled little princess could never have fallen off a cliff or into a river on her own.

The attacks are fiercer now, more desperate, and they're easy to brush off, easy to dismiss as the humans realize that they're going to lose.

And they are going to lose.

Weapons or no weapons, conviction or none, they simply do not belong in the forest, not the way Bellamy and his people do, and so they're going to lose.

_And then._

And then Octavia falls in love.

"You don't understand," she says, and Bellamy is afraid, he's so, so afraid.

"O—"

"I love him, Bell."

"You don't," he says, a knee-jerk reaction. "You can't. O, they've killed dozens of us—"

"It's not like that!" she snaps, cold and dismissive before her voice warms again. "I _love_ him!"

"You can't," he says again, helpless. "O, please, you can't—"

But she isn't listening anymore. 

There are grounders, he knows, who are sympathetic to the humans.

He just never thought Octavia would be one of them.

Her gaze turns to ice, and Bellamy wants to reach out to her, hold her the way he did when they were both children and she was so small and he was so unafraid. 

"They said you wouldn't listen," she says, and he cannot reach out to her, not with the way she's looking at him.

Like he's beneath her.

Like he's a stranger.

"The humans?" he asks, and she rolls her eyes.

"Bell, _we're_ humans!" she snaps, and his hands curl into helpless fists at his side.

( _No_ , he thinks but doesn't say. _You are_.)

Something about his expression seems to get through to her, and she sighs.

"We don't have to talk about it now," she says, and he tries to breathe himself back into being calm, tries to breathe away the fear. "Look, why don't we just—let's just finish eating, alright? I stole some dandelion wine off of Monty, he'll never even know it went missing."

Bellamy feels himself relax.

She's still his sister.

He trusts her completely.

_When he wakes up—_

_When he wakes up._

His wings are gone.

His wings are gone, and everything hurts, and he can't even stand, because the balance is wrong, everything's off.

His wings are gone, and all that's left are two ragged stumps, and he screams until his lungs give out, and the only sound that comes out is a desperate, terrified gasping.

Everything hurts.

His wings are gone, and there's going to be a wedding in the fortress of the humans.

A reward, the forest whispers. A throne for his wings.

A throne for the grounder princess who killed her brother, who killed the fiercest warrior, who killed her brother for the love of a human.

His wings are gone, and the humans think he's dead.

His wings are gone, and when the humans come again, they are armed to the teeth with weapons made of iron.

His wings are gone, and he screams in pain and grief and helpless rage, and he wishes that O had at least had the decency to finish the job.

For the first time ever, the forest retreats. 

Bellamy sinks his hands into the earth, calls upon the roots that twist beneath the soil, and throws up a wall a hundred feet high, made of twisting thorns and dripping poison. 

And then he runs.

Not really, not actually, because he can barely even walk without leaning on a staff, but he sinks back into the forest, hides the grounders that remain behind a wall of thorns and venom and prays to every old god he remembers that that will be enough.

His back still aches. 

The stumps that used to be wings refuse to heal, and he hates how blind it makes him, hates how hard the earth is beneath his feet.

He hates how human he must look now.

The humans still attack occasionally, and he doesn't hold back.

Not anymore.

Not after what they took from him.

He waves his hand, and the thorns shift, and all the iron in the world is not enough to save a human from a six-foot thorn through the chest. 

The forest retreats, but any human foolish enough to follow it does not return.

Bellamy walks the earth, relearning the feel of all the muscles he so rarely used, the rasp of the dirt beneath his feet, and he needs his wings, needs a way to rise higher, see farther. 

A clamor on the edges of the forest catches his attention, and a human has caught a bird in a net, has a club raised, ready to beat the creature to death for daring to steal a few crumbs of food.

Bellamy watches the bird struggle in the net, hopeless and terrified.

 _One pair of wings is as good as another_ , he thinks, and waves his hand.

For a second, something resists, something like another strain of magic—

But then the magic takes hold, and the bird grows and changes, and the human screams as the net falls away from the girl who's standing there in the dust.

The man runs away, and the girl remains, and there's still something of the bird in the sharpness of her gaze, the way she moves as her eyes snap around to glare at him.

"What have you done?" she demands, and Bellamy almost smiles.

The girl who used to be a bird calls herself Clarke.

Clarke is a good sort of spy.

She doesn't protest when he waves his hand to turn her back into a bird, just flaps her wings and hops back and forth and picks at his hair until he threatens to turn her into a worm instead, and then she squawks out a noise that sounds suspiciously like a laugh.

And she listens. 

She listens very well.

"The queen is dying," she tells him, and Bellamy isn't foolish enough to think that means it will all be over.

"Good," he says anyways, and Clarke shoots him a look.

"She was still a queen," she says stiffly. "Show a little respect."

He turns her back into a bird, and she pecks him on the side of the head in punishment. 

"The queen has no heirs to sit the throne in her place," she says, a week later. "They've—your sister. Is going to be crowned queen instead."

"I see," Bellamy says, quiet and blank. "Thank you for telling me."

She's watching him, careful, and so he waits until she's gone before he beats his hands bloody against the walls of the mountain cave that he calls his home.

But she eyes his hands when she returns, and he thinks he should have healed himself sooner, if he didn't want her to know.

Two months later, she gives him the worst news of all.

"A baby," he echoes, and she's sitting next to him at the edge of the cliff, pushing her shoulder into his like she's trying to ground him. "O's going to have a baby."

"Look on the bright side," Clarke says. "Maybe the baby will have horns."

Bellamy laughs, and it sounds cold and cruel, even to his own ears.

"Wouldn't matter," he says, and Clarke's eyes dart to his own spiralling horns, the stumps that used to be his wings. "She'd only cut them off."

Clarke tries to talk him out of it.

"It's a baby," she says. "Bellamy, the baby never did anything to you. This is between you and your sister, you don't have to hurt an innocent."

"It's a human," he says, and she closes her mouth with a snap. "There's nothing innocent about it."

Clarke glares at him, mutinous, and he turns her back into a bird, just so he won't have to feel the weight of her gaze on him anymore.

He dresses all in black for the christening. 

If O wants a monster, if O wants a villain, then he might as well look the part, right?

Clarke squawks at him, chatters and flaps her wings and makes little muttering noises under her breath, but she still perches on his shoulder when he leaves, presses against his neck and the side of his face, like she's still just trying to ground him.

He doesn't know how to say that he's grateful, so he just grumbles about getting feathers in his mouth and tries to ignore the fear that builds with each step as he leaves the forest and draws closer and closer to the world of the humans.

Octavia is surprised to see him again.

She's surprised, and it burns like iron, because did she expect him to just crawl off somewhere and die?

Surely she should have known he would come back.

"You're not welcome here," she says, and she looks like such a _human_ , down to the curl of her lip and the sneer in her voice.

Bellamy's wings ache.

"Not welcome?" he echoes, and looks sideways at Clarke to hide the pain and confusion and rage. "Kind of awkward, don't you think?"

There are other grounders there, though they shrink back before his gaze, dressed in ridiculous costumes, like animals dressed as men.

They're like pets, to the humans. Pets and jesters, and bright, pretty amusements for the humans—for O—

"I wanted to see my niece," he says, and O's gaze turns wary, cautious. "Can't I at least give my niece a gift, before I go?"

Octavia doesn't beg.

He didn't think she would.

She's too far gone for that. 

Her husband does, dropping to his knees without pride or shame, humbling himself before all of the humans to beg for his daughter's life, and Bellamy thinks that he's probably a good sort of man.

Good people are wasted on the humans.

He doesn't kill the child.

Of course he doesn't. 

Clarke relaxes, when he says he's changed his mind, like she thought he'd really go through with it, and he brushes his fingers across the crest of her neck, a silent reassurance. 

Octavia's eyes trace the motion, and she still doesn't speak.

"The spell _can_ be broken," Bellamy says, and the king bows his head, breathless with relief.

Foolish human.

The spell will never be broken.

"The spell can be broken," Bellamy says, and his sister's eyes are as cold as he's ever seen, and all he can feel is the ache in his spine when he first awoke, the way each step felt like a knife beneath his feet—"By true love's kiss."

Octavia throws everything she has at the forest.

It's not enough. 

All the iron in the world, and it could never be enough. 

In the end, she sends the child away.

And all that's left to do is wait.

"The child's name is Madi," Clarke says, some time later.

Bellamy doesn't care.

"The queen's hidden her in the country. She's being raised by a few of the grounders who were at the christening."

"I don't care."

Clarke hums, picking a few stray leaves out of her hair.

"She's an awfully cute little thing."

"Clarke, I really don't care."

She wrinkles her nose. "Not even a little bit?"

"Not even a little bit," Bellamy lies, and she scoffs, and scoffs again when he threatens to turn her back into a bird.

But the grounders that O gave her child to are unfit to raise an insect, let alone a child, and so two days later, he's sitting with his hands clamped over his ears while Clarke sits on a nearby branch in human form and tries not to laugh at him.

"I'm going to turn you into a _dog_ ," he promises her. "A _lamprey_."

"Come on," she says. "It's hungry."

"It's about to be hungry and also missing its vocal chords."

"It's cute," she insists. 

"It's obnoxious," he says, and she rolls her eyes and doesn't argue.

The child keeps crying, and it's the worst sound in the world, and he hates that it makes him think of O, and how tiny she was when their mother died.

"Here," he says, and a flower appears in the air between him and Clarke. "Put this in its mouth, that'll keep it fed."

Clarke takes the flower with an exceedingly smug expression. 

"Shut up," Bellamy says, and turns her back into a bird before she can laugh at him.

The child lives. 

Of course it does, it's got sixteen years to go before it's allowed to die.

But the child lives, and Clarke keeps vanishing for a few days, turning up again with some threadbare excuse, and he knows she's watching over it.

Octavia destroys every spinning wheel in the land.

It won't save her child.

"Well?" Bellamy asks, when Clarke reappears after a week. "Does it have horns or not?"

"I don't know," Clarke says. "Guess you'll have to come and see for yourself."

"You're not as cute as you think you are."

"No," she muses. "But that's because I think I'm pretty damn cute."

He goes to see the child.

Just because he's curious. 

It doesn't have horns.

It doesn't look exactly like O, either, the way he feared it would.

It is, he will reluctantly admit, relatively cute.

"That's your Uncle Bellamy," Clarke says, and waves one of the child's chubby little hands at him. "Can you say hello to your uncle?"

"Can it speak yet?" he asks, intrigued in spite of himself.

"Don't be ridiculous," she says. "She's only a baby."

His wings ache on wet days like today, and he feels the muscles twitch, longing to fly.

"Well," he says. "Better enjoy it while it lasts, I suppose."

Octavia's armies march on the forest once every few months.

Each time, Bellamy drives them back.

Sometimes Clarke is there, a huge black dog or a snarling lion, and she bleeds into his own reputation until the humans no longer know where he stops and she begins.

"You can shapeshift," she tells him after an morning spent eavesdropping on the child's useless caretakers. "Did you know?"

"Can I?" he asks, and watches the child chase a butterfly across the yard. "Wish someone had told me."

Clarke follows his gaze, chews on her lip for a second.

"She doesn't know the queen," she says. "Madi isn't your sister."

"I know," he says.

"Any chance you'll take back the curse?"

"None whatsoever."

The child pauses in the late afternoon light, glances over towards where he sits.

She can't see him.

If she sees anything at all, it'll only be his shadow.

Bellamy shrinks back all the same, feels Clarke's gaze on him, and doesn't feel guilty.

He doesn't. 

The child looks around for the butterfly, but it's disappeared, and Bellamy waves his hand, sends a stream of light dancing across the yard to pull away her gaze once more.

Clarke stretches a hand back over her shoulder, an instinct, searching to smooth down the feathers that no longer exist, and he knows the feeling.

"Want to be a bird?" he asks, and doesn't look over at her as she glances up in surprise. 

"No," she says after a pause. "I think I'm good like this."

The next week, Octavia's army blasts a hole through the wall with iron shrapnel, and he spears five men through at once, turns Clarke into a gryphon in order to drive them away once more.

The armies keep coming.

He keeps driving them off.

The child is old enough to speak now.

She chatters back and forth with Clarke for hours, and Clarke complains that all the time spent in animal forms has made her hearing oversensitive. 

But she keeps going back.

Most days, Bellamy goes with her.

Really, what else is he going to do with his days?

The king is fading, Clarke tells him, growing old before his time.

"People are saying it might be the queen," she mentions oh-so-casually. "They say she needs his strength to keep protecting the kingdom."

It's an interesting idea.

"Possible," Bellamy says. "Or possibly she was only bored."

Clarke looks disturbed at the idea, and he laughs at her expression, tells her to go waste time with the child, to stop trying to figure his sister out.

"She asks after you, you know," she says. "Madi, I mean. Calls you the shadow in the yard."

He makes a face. "How unimaginative."

"But dramatic."

"That's true," he concedes. "And really, that's the important part."

Clarke rolls her eyes, tips her head to one side to consider him. "So what should I tell her?"

"Tell her whatever you want," Bellamy says, and shrugs. "What do I care?"

Ten years later, the child is standing in the heart of the forest and calling him her fairy godfather, and Clarke laughs out loud at the look on his face.

The way it happens is like this: he doesn't love the child.

He doesn't. 

Bellamy isn't sure, but he thinks the part of him that knows how to love anything may have been cut away with his wings.

But Madi is small and clever and disgustingly cheerful, and her face lights up whenever she sees Clarke, and she recognizes her no matter what form she's in.

She's kind to Clarke, and she's kind to any of the other denizens of the forest, and she's even kind to the utterly incompetent grounders that she considers her family.

Bellamy doesn't love her.

But he might like her, just a little.

"You're pathetic," Clarke tells him, because the other grounders no longer skirt around the edges of his vision, but she's still the only one who dares laugh at him to his face. "Absolutely pathetic."

He goes to turn her back into a bird, but she catches his hand, and it startles him enough that she stays a human for the rest of the week.

The child grows, and she's as lovely as he promised O she would be, pretty and intelligent and far too curious for her own good.

She would probably have a good life, Bellamy supposes. 

If it weren't for him.

And she's drawn to the forest.

It would drive her mother apoplectic with rage, to see the way she naturally drifts towards the long shadows, the darkening glens, and so he shifts the thorns, opens up a path to let her wind her way deeper without running across any real danger, and he ignores Clarke's eyes on the side of his head.

Her caretakers are furious, the first time they learn where she goes during the day, but once the shouting has died down, she creeps back out to the woods, all wide-eyed and mesmerized by the magic.

Bellamy wonders if she can feel the forest in her blood, the way he always does.

The way Octavia used to.

So that's how it goes for a while, and Clarke pretends not to notice when he steers a scouting group of soldiers away from the girl, and he pretends not to notice that she's constantly laughing at him when she thinks he can't see her.

The girl grows older, grows braver in her explorations, and Clarke scoffs when he complains about how hard it is to keep the little imp from wandering into the truly dangerous parts of the green.

"You sound like my father," she says, and Bellamy glances over at her.

"Are birds usually close with their fathers?" he can't help wondering, and she gives him a look that he doesn't understand. "I didn't know."

She mutters that there's a _lot_ he doesn't know, and he's about to demand to know what she means, and then the child turns in their direction, down in the glen below, and she says—

"I can see you."

"Why don't you have wings?" Madi asks one day, and Clarke goes very still beside him.

In the months since their first proper meeting, the girl has relaxed, grown as comfortable around him as she is around Clarke, which is equal parts flattering and inconvenient, mostly because of questions like this one.

"I used to," Bellamy says. "But then I lost them."

It's about as delicately as he can manage to phrase it.

Madi frowns. "How did you lose a pair of wings?"

"Madi," Clarke says, warning. 

"It's alright," Bellamy says. "I didn't really lose them. Someone else took them."

She thinks about that, and Bellamy watches her work through it, doesn't think about how sometimes his back still spasms in sudden pain, fifteen years later.

At last, Madi says, "Like a curse?"

Bellamy risks a look over at Clarke, who raises an eyebrow at him but doesn't say anything at all.

"Sort of like a curse," he allows. "Why?"

Madi shrugs. "My aunts have been talking a lot about curses lately. I think there's something they're not telling me."

There are probably quite a few things that they aren't telling her.

"My aunts say that only horrible people use curses," Madi continues, and there's no way that he's going to look at Clarke now. "But I think some people deserve to be cursed. If they've done something really bad."

"Alright," he manages, and if it comes out a little uneasy, no one but Clarke seems to notice.

Madi glances up at him.

"Have you ever cursed anyone, Uncle?"

Clarke puts her chin on one hand and stares at him, obnoxious.

"Once," Bellamy says. "Only once."

"Oh." Madi seems to realize she's dancing towards a dangerous topic. "And did they deserve it?"

Bellamy looks at her, because he can't look at Clarke, but she's just standing there, utterly unaware, and he finds he can't look at her anymore, either.

"No," he says at last. "They didn't."

Fifteen years is a long time to hate someone.

(Forever is a very long time to sleep.)

That night, he stands outside the window where his niece sleeps, and he stretches out his hand, and he calls back the magic.

He can feel it wrapped around her bones, like a vise, like it's going to crush her down to dust.

He calls.

The magic responds.

But he cannot lift the curse.

He stands there until sunrise, breathless and aching from trying, and the sun sends its long fingers across the valley, and he cannot lift the curse. 

"There's still time," Clarke says.

"Not enough."

"We could try—"

"It won't work."

She huffs. "You don't even know what I was going to say."

"It doesn't matter," he says, dark. "There's nothing to be done. The curse will take her, and there's nothing I can—nothing anyone can do about it."

Clarke purses her lips, thinking hard.

At last, she says, "But true love's kiss—"

Bellamy laughs, and it sounds cold even to his own ears.

"Don't you get it?" he asks, and Clarke blinks, taken aback. "There's no such thing."

Madi is talking to a group of grounders on the other side of the clearing, and this was a mistake, this was all a mistake.

Clarke is silent for a few moments, just watching him, and he can feel the judgment in her gaze, and he doesn't blame her.

Then, very quietly, she says, "I think I'd like to be a bird right now."

He doesn't blame her for that, either. 

With a wave of his hand, she flaps up off the tree where she was sitting her, and he watches until she disappears above the trees, and he wishes like anything that he could follow her.

They don't give up.

Of course they don't. 

They've still got a year, and that's plenty of time for the child to fall in love, right?

Clarke insists that it is, and he wants so badly to believe her that he agrees.

"Does it have to be another grounder?" Clarke asks, eight months before Madi's birthday. "Will it work with a human, or does it half to be another half-grounder?"

"I don't know," he says, helpless. "How should I know? I've never done this before."

They try to make it happen.

Male, female, agender—Bellamy and Clarke have no real idea what Madi even _likes_ , let alone _loves_ , so they're just trying anything that will work.

"What about a love spell?" Clarke suggests, though it's clear she hates the idea. "I know there are grounders who have certain...talents, would that be enough?"

"No," Bellamy says quickly, and she looks relieved. "No, it has to be true love."

The days march relentlessly onward.

They're running out of time.

Three months before Madi's birthday, Bellamy is horrified to realize that he understands Octavia's reaction. 

She destroyed every spinning wheel in her kingdom, maybe he could just—put Madi in a light coma until her birthday has passed?

Turn Clarke into a gryphon or a dragon or whatever the hell else will keep everyone away for just a few more days.

"That's not how it works," Clarke says, sad. "You know it doesn't work like that."

He knows.

"Just on the day, then," he says. "As long as we can keep her safe on the day."

"On the day," Clarke agrees. "Whatever it takes."

The date draws ever nearer, and Madi must notice their frantic attempts to create some sort of love connection for her, but she doesn't comment.

The night before her sixteenth birthday, Bellamy panics.

"We'll come and get you tomorrow morning," he promises Madi, who's looking a little bit bemused. "The three of us, we'll spend all day in the forest. No one will ever have to know."

"Sounds like a plan," Madi says, bright and cheerful, and if she sees the look Clarke and Bellamy trade over her head, she doesn't say a thing.

On her sixteenth birthday, everything falls apart.

Bellamy and Clarke go to meet her before the sun is even up, and she's there already, arms crossed tightly across her middle, eyes staring holes into the ground.

"Madi," Clarke says, and the girl's gaze is cold enough to burn.

"Were you going to tell me?" she asks, and for just a split second, she looks exactly like her mother. 

Bellamy takes a step back before he realizes what he's done.

"It's not what you think," Clarke starts, and Madi laughs.

"You _knew_ ," she hisses, and Clarke's words die in her throat. "You _knew_ what he was—what he did to me, and you never said a thing!"

"Madi," Clarke says again. "Wait, just listen—"

But Madi isn't looking at her anymore.

"Was it true?" she asks Bellamy. "They said you cursed me for something that happened before I was born. They said you killed my father. Drove my mother mad. They said you tried to kill me."

Bellamy looks at her, and she looks like Octavia, but she looks even more like herself, like this impossible child that he hated for so long until he realized too late that he didn't.

"Well?" Madi asks again. "Is it true?"

Bellamy doesn't have the words to defend himself.

Even if he does, he doesn't think he'd try.

"It's true," he says, and Madi begins to weep. 

She leaves, and Clarke hisses at him to follow her, but he can't. 

They're out of time.

Each step across the hollow earth hurts as badly as it did on that first awful day, and Bellamy digs his heels into the dirt and tries to make himself believe that it's his penance.

Clarke won't let him give up.

"There's that boy," she says. "Monty's kid, they've been friends since she was five."

It's not enough. 

It won't be enough. 

"Dammit, Bellamy!" Clarke snaps. "We have to at least _try_!"

There are still some hours left in the day.

They have to at least try.

They'll take the boy to the castle, to Octavia's throne room.

"She'll kill you," Clarke says, and he knows it's the truth.

"So long as she lets the boy in first," he says, and Clarke bites her lip for a second before she nods.

By the time they reach the castle, it's too late.

Bellamy feels the moment that the curse takes hold, feels the sickening poison sweep through the air and straight into his lungs.

He stops. 

"Bellamy," Clarke says, and behind her the boy who looks like a human is pale and quiet and terrified. "We keep going."

They reach the castle at last, and the sight makes Bellamy laugh, a hopeless, utterly empty sound.

Because there's a wall of thorns around the castle.

A thicket maze, like when he and O were young, but the thorns are made entirely of iron.

Monty's son is quiet, and Bellamy is despairing, and Clarke is the one who goes first. 

"Wait," Bellamy says, because even if she only used to be a bird, she's been in human shape for so long that he's suddenly unsure, and he can't bear to see the iron burn her, too.

Clarke lays her hand flat against the nearest thorn, and her flesh remains whole.

She doesn't burn at all.

He follows her into the maze, and the boy follows him, and they wind their way deeper and deeper into the castle.

Somewhere, he knows, somewhere in the twisting madness that surrounds him, his sister is waiting.

It doesn't work. 

The three caretakers are waiting on the other side of the maze, and when they see the boy, they're so desperate for a cure that they don't care who brought him.

They latch on and drag him into the room where Madi is sleeping, and Bellamy closes his eyes, leans against the door, and feels Clarke push against his shoulder.

Trying to ground him, after all these years.

The doors open again, and the boy's eyes are red, and his face is pale, and it didn't work. 

"Leave us," Bellamy orders, and the caretakers glance nervously between him and Clarke and the boy. "I said, _leave us_."

They leave.

They have no choice.

Madi has been tucked into the kind of bed that the humans love, gilded and ornate and far too much like a burial shroud.

Beside him, Clarke is silent, but he can feel her grief rolling off of her in waves.

The girl in the bed is silent, too.

"I'm sorry," Bellamy tells her, because he never had the nerve to say it while she was awake. "As long as I live, I swear, you'll be safe."

"We'll watch out for you," Clarke promises, and her voice shakes with each word. "Not like we could stop now, right?"

Bellamy chokes out a laugh, because they were supposed to look out for her, they were supposed to keep her safe, and clearly they've done a fantastic job of that so far.

It's not enough. 

He's tired of it.

He's so very tired.

But he kisses her hand before he goes, because she is the daughter of a queen, and he owes her that much respect.

Clarke kisses her on the forehead, because it's what she's always done, even when he was still pretending to hate the girl.

And then they leave.

They're all the way back by the door when a sudden breath freezes them in their tracks, and Madi wakes up.

Later, Clarke will insist that it was his kiss that broke the spell, just as he'll insist it was hers.

Madi herself will only bring up the possibility that it was the boy's when she wants to annoy everybody. 

But for now, there is nothing but relief.

Clarke knocks Madi out of the bed with a hug, and Madi reaches out and drags him in, too, and all three of them are huddled on the floor beside the bed, and Madi is crying, and so is Clarke, and it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility that Bellamy is, too.

"You didn't leave me," Madi keeps saying over and over again, voice muffled against Bellamy's chest, encircled by Clarke's arms. "You didn't leave me, I thought you were gone—"

"Of course not," Clarke says, because Bellamy finds, quite suddenly, that he is not capable of speech. "Madi, we would _never_."

They get the whole story out of her in bits and pieces —her sudden reappearance at the castle, how excited she had been to finally meet her mother, the nervous anticipation as she was led into the throne room—

Her mother's rage, her fury at the caretakers who had let her slip their grasp at the last moments, her cold dismissal that had left Madi locked away in the castle, unable to leave the highest tower— 

The spinning wheel that had appeared, shimmering and ethereal, in the corner of the room.

"I didn't mean to," Madi whispers into the silence. "I knew I shouldn't, but it was like it was _calling_ me."

"It's alright," Bellamy says, and his arms hurt with how tightly he's holding on to the both of them. "It's alright, it's over, you're safe now."

She isn't, of course.

Because they still have to get out of this cursed place.

Octavia is waiting for them.

Waiting for him.

He knew she would be.

They make their way back through the winding maze, and it's shifted somehow, leading them down a crooked path, and Madi slips one hand into Bellamy's own hand, and one into Clarke's, and he knows that she must be able to feel the fear coiling off of the both of them.

She doesn't say anything, though, so he just squeezes her hand once and keeps moving.

They make it all the way to the throne room before they're attacked.

The maze opens up into a great, empty hall, and Bellamy has just enough time to feel relief and then a great, all-consuming fear—

The soldiers attack.

They are armed with iron shields and iron swords, like knights from a thousand's thousand years in the past, and it should be nothing at all to fight them off, nothing at all to dismiss them with a wave of his hand.

But Madi is there, and the swords will cut her as easily as they burn him, and they are so very far away from the forest—

"Go!" Bellamy shouts, and he shoves Madi back towards the thorns, towards the safety of the maze—

One of the soldiers slams their iron shield into his back, and Clarke screams as pain lances through Bellamy's spine, sets the stumps of his wings alight in agony.

He falls to his knees, sees Madi disappearing back into the maze, and his whole world is nothing but pain and helpless fear—

Clarke is there.

He struggles up to his feet, sends three men flying across the empty room, and sees Clarke kicking a soldier backwards into another, screaming an endless barrage of human curses that almost make him want to laugh.

Madi is safe.

Madi is safe, but Clarke is not, and neither is he, because that first blow to his back is still scattering his thoughts, leaving him at a fraction of his usual strength, and his wings are burning, he swears he can feel them burning—

Clarke is still shouting, and there are so many soldiers, and one of them bashes her across the head with his shield—

Bellamy lunges for her, panic making him sloppy, and then everything is burning, and he falls to the ground once more, and he doesn't understand—

A net.

They have caught him in a net made of iron chains.

Bellamy pushes up onto his knees, slots his fingers through the links in the net, ignores the way that the simple action sears his flesh in an instant—

There are men holding Clarke, a sword at her throat, and she meets his gaze for an instant, just for a split second—

" _Dragon_ ," he whispers, and waves his hand one more time.

Clarke is magnificent. 

Of course she is, she always is.

But Clarke is a dragon, and she is _magnificent_. 

The soldiers fall back in terror, and Bellamy tears his way free of the net, and Clarke roars in triumph, sends a jet of white-hot flame licking into every corner of the room.

The heat washes over him in a wave, and he feels the power behind it, hears the soldiers screaming, trying to get away.

 _Good_ , he thinks. _Good, just let us leave_ —

They almost make it.

They really almost make it.

But the doors fly open into the hall, and Clarke shrieks in rage and pain as the lances pierce even her armored hide—

And Octavia is there.

Octavia is there, and there are so many soldiers, armed and dressed in iron from head to toe.

Octavia is there, and she wields two knives as long as her arms.

Octavia is there, and she looks at him like he's nothing but a worm beneath her feet, and she holds two blades made of pure iron. 

If there were ever any doubt in his mind, it's gone now.

Octavia is human. 

And it matters to her that he is not.

Clarke screams in anger and fear, and Bellamy lunges at Octavia, at the men who hold the traces of the iron spears buried in Clarke's side, in her legs—

Octavia steps forward to meet him—

At the end of the day, he knows, it was never going to be a fair fight.

He is still unbalanced from the pain, from the burning, and his mind is swallowed up in fear for Clarke, fear for Madi, grief for his sister and hatred for the same. 

And Octavia is nothing but two blades and a single-minded devotion to see him dead.

They fight, and she cuts a stripe across his chest, so that blood splashes out onto the floor, and he can't even retreat, there are iron shields at every side— 

Clarke roars from somewhere on the other side of the room, and they've got chains on her, too, and he hates himself for doing this to her, for freeing her from that net so many years ago only to bring her here, to this hellish place, and watch her be snared once more—

A soldier slams their shield into his shoulders, into the ragged stumps of his wings, and Octavia is winded, too, bloodied and breathing hard—

But the blow knocks his breath clean out of his lungs, and he falls to the floor, sick with pain, and he sees his little sister grin in triumph—

They almost make it.

In the end, almost is not enough.

And then—

 _And then—_

There is a crash, a blur of motion, Octavia screams, and his wings are back. 

His wings are back, and Bellamy leaps up from the ground, catches a glimpse of Madi, standing there with awe writ large upon her features, holding the doors open in a desperate burst of inspiration.

His wings are back, and he whirls in midair, dives at the men who are pinning Clarke to the ground, sends them scattering away with a single blow.

His wings are back, and Octavia screams again and again, breathless with frustrated rage.

Clarke is human again, torn and bleeding and exhausted, but alive, she's alive, and so is Madi, and so is he.

There is a chain around his ankle, the soldiers are panicking as their queen rages at them, and he flaps his wings once, soars high above the ground, heading for the window at the other end of the hall—

Octavia is holding the other end of the chain, and he hears himself screaming at her to let go, to let him go, she doesn't have to do this—

She holds on, and her features are twisted with hatred, and she clings to the chain as he crashes through the window—

She tried to kill Clarke.

She locked her daughter away.

She took his wings.

His wings are back, and Octavia holds on until he climbs too high, and then she cannot hold on any longer.

His wings are back, and Bellamy hears himself scream, too, but Octavia falls all the way down, and he does not save her.

After, there is more confusion. 

He returns to the throne room to find the soldiers milling about uncertainly while the princess they have never met holds the head of the woman lying on the floor in her lap and cries.

"Bellamy!" When she sees him, she almost stands, but Clarke groans weakly, and she stays where she is. "She's hurt, I don't know—she's really hurt—"

Bellamy kneels beside her, feels Clarke's pulse beating weakly in the hollow of her throat, and he remembers how to breathe again.

"It's alright," he says, and he is so, so tired, but he presses his fingers against the floor until the stones remember that they were not always part of the castle, and that the earth beneath them is the same earth that lies beneath the forest.

His back still aches. 

The muscles that give strength to his wings have not been used in so long, and he still feels as though this is all a dream, as though he'll look back any second and see them cut away once more.

But the stone remembers, and he draws upon their strength when he has none, and Clarke breathes out slowly, quietly, as the wounds in her side begin to close.

Madi sobs in relief, and Bellamy understands the feeling.

"Your highness," one of the soldiers says, and Bellamy snarls up at him, takes a savage sort of pride in the way that the man falls back a step or two. 

"This man is my uncle," Madi says, and Bellamy remembers the blessings of the other grounders, the promise that all who met her could not help but love her.

Really, he thinks, they never stood a chance.

"He's my uncle," she says again, and the soldier doesn't like it, but she glares at him until he lowers his shield, and then smiles so sweetly that it leaves him looking a little bit stunned.

Clarke blinks her eyes open, and her fingers curl around Madi's hand, around Bellamy's wrist where his hand rests against the bones of her chest. 

Madi beams down at her, and Bellamy can feel the soldiers staring at the strange, sad little scene they must make.

Their confusion is almost palpable, in a way that would make Bellamy laugh if he weren't so very tired, but at least they haven't raised their weapons again.

For now, he thinks, it's enough. 

Clarke's breathing is stronger now as her ribs knit themselves back together, and Madi squeezes her hand in response, looks up at the guards once more.

"My aunt is injured," she says, and gives them all another dazzling smile. "Who would I speak to about a place for her to stay?"

They heal.

Slowly, the burns fade from off Bellamy's skin, and the holes in Clarke's side seal up and disappear, and Madi grumbles that they both would heal up a lot faster if they didn't spend so much time following her around like a pair of overprotective guard dogs. 

Bellamy doesn't mind.

If that's the trade-off, making sure she's safe and taking a little longer to heal himself, he'll gladly take that bargain.

The land heals, too.

Under Octavia's reign, the humans had grown pale and sullen, fearful of the forest and the castle alike, terrified by every passing shadow.

Of course, he knows, this will not go away overnight.

But Madi goes out among the people, with Clarke and Bellamy beside her, and she smiles and laughs and is so inoffensively charming that Bellamy thinks he sees one or two of the humans looking almost tempted to smile.

The first time a human speaks to him, it is a child, and the child's mother gasps in fear, tries to pull her daughter back to her side.

"It's alright," Bellamy says. "I don't mind. They're real, yes."

The mother is looking between him and the child, nervous and uncertain, but the little girl just frowns up at him and then asks, "Can I see?"

Bellamy can feel Clarke's eyes on him.

"Of course," he says, because Madi is the queen now, and she needs this, she needs the people to trust her, rather than just like her. 

She is the queen, and she is not his sister, and so Bellamy kneels, turns his back on the human and her child—

He flinches when the girl's tiny hands brush over the feathers of his wings, and his shoulders are locked tight with remembered pain.

But Octavia is gone, and Madi is the queen, and Clarke is standing close enough that he can almost feel her, and it will not happen again. 

It will not happen again.

He lets the human child inspect his wings, and wants to shake with the terror of turning his back on the humans, takes deep breaths and forces himself to stay still.

At last, the girl steps back, and Bellamy stands up, breathes out again and almost doesn't hear the way that the mother prods the child into saying thank you.

"It's no problem," he lies, and the mother is still nervous, but the little girl only looks the way Madi did, whenever she first started sneaking into the forest. "It's perfectly fine."

The people are still afraid.

So are the grounders. 

But slowly, slowly, that begins to heal, too.

On Madi's coronation day, Bellamy sets Clarke free.

When he gives her the necklace, she is confused at first, makes some joke about it being a tacky sort of thing, and really, how does he expect it to match the kind of clothes Madi's always dressing them up in?

"If it's a problem," Bellamy says. "You can always change."

Clarke looks at the necklace again.

Woven into the golden chain, there are two feathers—one from his left wing and one from hers.

"Is this—"

Bellamy nods and finds himself suddenly very interested in studying the view out the castle window. 

"Whatever you want to be," he says. "You can change into whatever you like, and I can't—you won't have to wait for me to do anything."

Far away in the distance, he can see the forest, the wall of thorns long gone, buried under the earth once more.

"Huh," Clarke says, and slips the necklace over her head, so that it settles beneath her shirt. 

Bellamy looks back in time to see that she is a bird, and then a deer, and then a wolf, and then a snake, and then she is a human again, standing before him and grinning ear to ear.

"I would've done it sooner," he says, because it's true. "But I couldn't—"

Clarke runs a finger along the long black feather woven into the chain.

"But you were sort of missing one of the key components," she guesses, and he nods. "So what am I meant to do with this?"

Bellamy looks toward the forest once more.

He meant what he said, he's wanted to free her for so long now, but his hands had curled around the necklace once it was finished, and an unfamiliar fear had gripped his heart.

She could leave, he knows. 

Step right through the window and be gone, and he wouldn't try to stop her.

He's so tired of being afraid.

"Whatever you want," he says, and hopes she understands what he's trying to say, because he sure as hell doesn't. "You can go wherever you want."

"Huh," Clarke says again.

When he looks back over at her, she's still got one finger twisted around the necklace, but she's smiling, trying to hide it and failing miserably.

"Well, right now," she says. "Where I _want_ to go is two floors down and to the right. Think this necklace can handle that?"

The throne room.

Madi will be getting ready soon.

"Yeah," Bellamy says, and he can't help but smile a little bit, too. "Yeah, I think that should be fine."

He holds out his arm, the way the humans do, and Clarke loops her arm through his, so practiced and easy that it looks almost natural on her.

There are still traces of iron around the castle, and Clarke stops him from brushing against a window that's been left open, closes it without the slightest trace of red on her fingers.

When she sees him looking, she shrugs and then grins up at him. 

"Madi's waiting for us," she tells him, overly serious. "Let's not spoil her big day with too many questions."

Madi is crowned queen, and the crowd cheers.

Mostly humans, but there are some grounders mixed in among them, side by side with the humans and cheering just as loud. 

Bellamy watches the scene, and he doesn't hate it.

Clarke is beside him, her arm still tucked through his, and Madi is beaming like the child she was on that very first day, so bright and open and utterly unexpected. 

There will be time.

Time to watch the people grow careless with celebration, time for Madi to get maybe a little bit tipsy and drag him into a dance while loudly insisting that it's a father-daughter thing and that the humans love that sort of nonsense, time for Clarke to make fun of him while he pretends that he's completely unaffected by that utterly ridiculous statement. 

And after that, there will be time to watch the forest grow, watch the sun shine on the humans as they remember how to be unafraid, time to remember how to be unafraid himself. 

There will be time to ask Clarke all the questions she's been dodging for years, time to argue with Madi while she argues with her counselors, time to walk among the humans and see the way they no longer look away from his shadow. 

Time to grow, he thinks, watching as Madi waves to the crowd and it cheers even louder than before.

Overhead, the sun is shining, and the wind from the north is cool and carrying a whisper from somewhere far away.

 _Time_ , Bellamy thinks.

He spreads his wings, and Madi glances back and rolls her eyes, and he leaps high up into the air, climbs up and up and up until the noise of the crowd is lost in the wind that carries him ever higher.


End file.
